From Across the Clouded Range (47 page)

The sparring continued for a few more
strokes. “Well, are you a mute?” Jaret scolded as he slashed
Yatier’s blade to the side and tapped him in the ribs with his
dome-shaped dagger. He only hit the man hard enough to bruise but
saw his lips purse. “If you aren’t going to use those lungs for
anything else, they might as well test my dirk.”

“
Yes, sir,” Yatier
responded between gasps. “What . . . would you have me tell
you?”

“
History, damn you! You
heard Commander Hanar.” Jaret flicked his wrist, sending his sword
zipping under Yatier’s attempt to parry, and into his
thigh.

“
Yes, sir. May I ask . . .
a ques . . . ?” The dagger hit Yatier in the stomach. He was ready
for it and clenched his muscles so that he did not lose his wind,
but it would be another painful bruise tomorrow.

“
Did Commander Hanar say,
‘Questions’?” Jaret barked and casually swept the legionnaire’s
blade away.

“
No, sir.”

“
Then tell me some
history.”

“
Yes, sir. How about . . .
the . . . the Second War . . . of . . . of Pindarian
Succession?”

“
I won’t have you trying
to flatter me, legionnaire. I was there. I already know what
happened. Tell me about the Liandrin Revolts.”

The legionnaire looked surprised. “But
Lord Commander . . . you wrote the . . . the definitive history of
the revolts.” He flinched when the dagger struck him in the center
of his back. Jaret had spun all the way around him when he had made
an ill-advised overhand swing.

“
You have died for the
fourth time now in the last five minutes.” Jaret called a pause to
the session and rounded on the legionnaire. “I think that is some
kind of a record. Two thing. First, you are not wearing heavy plate
and are not fighting some mob of unarmored peasants who are holding
spears for the first time. You have nothing more than your helmet,
that vest of rings, and your sword to protect you. You cannot swing
like some lumbering brute. You can get away with wild swings when
you are in armor because it will protect you against an untrained
counter. But without that armor, a wild swing will kill you and,
more importantly, endanger me if I am standing next to you. Even if
you slash your opponent clean in two, his friend will put his spear
right through you. Remember, dead is dead. You can’t kill a man any
more than once no matter how hard you hit him.

“
Speed is your weapon now.
Skill, patience, control. With those you can defeat anyone. You can
face ten men at once. No one will stand against you.
Understand?”

“
Yes, Lord Commander,” the
legionnaire answered formally, the smile returning to his
lips.

Jaret watched him.
Something isn’t right here.
He could still not believe that he had made it through a year
of training at the Camp. It was the most rigorous, most difficult
training that any man could face, and that came only after they had
been hand-picked as the absolute best in their original
units.

“
The second thing,” Jaret
continued when he had decided that the first point was sufficiently
made. “Do you have any idea why Commander Hanar calls out a topic
for each session of sparing?”

“
No, sir.” The answer
earned Yatier a cuffing.

“
What in the hell is
Corwin doing at the Camp?” Jaret asked under his breath. He did not
expect an answer, though he would seek one from Sub-commander
Corwin Thalim, the master of the Camp, soon enough.

“
For a
true
legionnaire,” Jaret said the
word in such a way to denote that this man was not yet one of that
number, “swordplay is a reaction. It requires no thought. Your body
should be its own entity. Now that is not to say that sparring does
not require intelligence. Just the opposite. It requires so much
intelligence and that intelligence must be drawn so quickly that it
cannot be stored in the mind. It must be stored in your muscles.”
He tapped Yatier on the arms for emphasis. “If you wait for your
mind to tell you what to do, you are already dead. That is why we
give the mind something else to do. So it doesn't get in the way of
what your muscles should be able to do without it.
Understand?”

“
Yes, sir.”

“
Now, I believe you were
about to tell me about the Liandrin Revolts.”

As the swords clashed together in a
more impressive display, Yatier began to speak. “I believe,
Warlord, that the . . . . Ugh!” Another blow glanced off his
ribs.

“
Keep that blade under
control, damn you!” Jaret warned.

“
Yes, sir!” The swords
slashed together in a series of parries as Yatier continued
speaking. “The Liandrin Revolts . . . is the single most important
event in the history . . . of the . . . of the Empire, Lord
Commander. Agh!” Jaret’s flicked his sword around to catch Yatier’s
forearm.

“
If you call me Lord
Commander again, I’ll break that arm.”

“
Yes, sir. The revolts
started . . . two hundred and thirty-one years ago . . . when . . .
when Emperor Tzirion . . . named his cousin to be overseer of
Liandrin.” Yatier was panting through the recitation, but his
sparring had improved. Jaret was actually getting close to breaking
a sweat.

“
That is a pretty
simplistic interpretation of events, legionnaire,” Jaret cautioned.
“I don’t like simplicity.”

“
I suppose that was the
proverbial . . . straw, sir. By your own admission . . . it was
centuries of corr . . . corruption that was symbolized by the . . .
the appointment.”

“
Correct.” Jaret brushed
aside a thrust but was pleased to see Yatier deftly dodge his
counterstroke. He was also pleased that the young man knew his
history. Jaret had studied the Liandrin Revolts for many years and
had written a sizeable text on them and the events that led to
them. As a deeply religious man, he strongly believed that history
was the clearest way to see the will of the Order and was adamant
that his men learn its lessons and work to protect its traditions.
In that regard, at least, Yatier had not failed in his
training.

“
It really started with
the assassination of the Xi’ Valati by Emperor Canisious four
hundred years prior to that,” Jaret continued. “Remember, in that
time, the Church controlled every aspect of every person’s life.
They practically told people when they could shit, let alone who
they would marry, when they could have children, what color they
could paint their flaming houses. And if you didn’t follow along,
the Emperor’s officials killed you. No questions, only
death.”

“
But. . .” Yatier paused
as he narrowly escaped a stroke aimed at his knee. The dodge left
him off balance, and he fell back several steps.

“
But what?” Jaret yelled
as he pressed the attack.

“
But . . . the Church,
sir. Xionious . . . Valatarian started . . . those controls . . .
to ensure that people followed the . . . the Holy Order. The Church
. . . the Church set the laws based on their interpretation . . .
of the Order . . . and the Emperors just enforced those
laws.”

“
True enough,” Jaret
agreed, “and it might have worked if Valatarian had lived forever,
but when he died the whole thing unraveled. The Emperors’ powers
grew until they controlled everything, both the creation and
enforcement of the laws. The assassination of Xi Valati Tollaru
removed the final barrier. From that point on, the Emperors
controlled the Church and ruled unopposed.”

“
Corruption grew,” Yatier
picked up the story. His smile returned between words and pants. If
Jaret did not know better, he would have guessed he was enjoying
this. “Every resource in the world . . . was soon dedicated . . .
dedicated to the enrichment of . . . the Emperor and his family.
The people . . . tolerated it until . . . until Emperor Tzirion
replaced . . . replaced the popular overseer of
Liandrin.”

“
His name?” Jaret asked as
he danced back from an attack that ended with the Yatier receiving
another bruise.

“
Elden Risbourg de
Nardees,” he answered between pants. They had stopped for a moment
while he caught his breath. He seemed to be having trouble deciding
which bruise to rub first.

“
You know your history,
Yatier,” Jaret commended. “At least that's something. What happened
when de Nardees was replaced?” He brought his sword around hard.
The sudden stroke caught the legionnaire by surprise. He caught
Jaret’s blade but could not keep the dagger from finding his
stomach.

“
The people revolted. They
. . . they hung the Emperor’s cousin . . . out the window of the
palace by . . . by his own silk sheets.”

“
And left him there for
the crows,” Jaret growled. “They named de Nardees the King of
Liandrin and declared independence from the Empire.”

Yatier smiled at the repartee, but it
disappeared when a stroke just missed putting a sizable dent in his
helm. “Most of the cities . . . to the west of the Olieati River .
. . joined Liandrin, and . . . and the revolts began.”

They had fallen back to another rest,
so Jaret finished the story. “The Morgs abandoned the Empire and
sold themselves lodge by lodge to the highest bidder. The Empire
was hopelessly outnumbered, but countless freakish disasters struck
the rebels, and the war lasted twenty-six years. But not even
divine intervention – as some called it – could not save us. The
rebels bought the full support of the Morgs, captured Olieati,
crossed the river, and routed the imperial forces in the Battle of
Lorna Da.

“
That ended it. Liandria
formed from the coalition of cities that had fought the Empire. The
sparsely populated lands to the west of the Alta River, which had
remained neutral, broke into eighteen warring kingdoms. The Morgs,
who had always been outside of direct Imperial control, established
formal borders. And the Church of the Holy Order, under threat from
a Liandrin plan to create their own hierarchy, recognized the new
nations and gave up its role as the creator of laws, the
Reinterpretation.”

“
Stop!” Traeger’s voice
carried over the clash of steel around them. The legionnaires in
the courtyard, most of them sweat soaked and panting, stepped back
into their two circles. Jaret and Yatier followed suit. Jaret was
ready to move on to his next opponent – he wanted some real
exercise this morning, needed the release from the burdens he
carried – but Traeger had other plans. “Same opponents,” he
announced, “Questions!”

Jaret looked at his friend on the
platform. He could swear that he was suppressing a chuckle. He was
not allowed to assess the expression further. He blocked a feinted
jab then spun away from the thrust that followed. “Better,” he
complimented as he twisted away from another stroke then caught the
counter with the guard of his dagger.

“
Thank you, sir. So, I
guess . . . it’s my turn to ask . . . to ask you
questions?”

“
Those are the rules,”
Jaret admitted with a scowl. The questions sessions allowed the
lower ranked or less tenured legionnaires to ask any question they
desired of their superiors. Jaret had a strong suspicion that
Traeger only called for those sessions when he knew that Jaret was
among the men.

“
In that case . . .”
Yatier pressed his momentary advantage with a series of quick blows
that sent Jaret back a step. “How did you reach your current
position? How did a peasant by birth become the de facto leader of
the San Chier Empire?”

“
Wouldn’t you rather like
to know how I managed to keep myself from gagging when I visited
your ugly whore of a mother last night?” Jaret saw the man’s eyes
grow wide and his teeth clench. He rewarded the legionnaire with an
especially hard poke in the center of his chest.

“
Don’t ever let your
emotions get in the way when you’re fighting,” Jaret counseled.
“Being angry at your opponent is the surest way to let him kill
you.” The legionnaire fell back and rubbed the new bruise, but his
anger was gone. Jaret did not give him time to recover. He pressed
the attack as he spoke – if he was going to have to tell this story
again, he was at least going to make the man pay for it.

“
As you apparently know, I
was born a peasant, nothing more than a vine boy in a small
vineyard south of Caliea. But I was lucky enough to be
recruited
for the First
War of Pindarian Succession. By recruited, of course, I mean that
the vine master put my name in a book and the sergeant led me and
most of my friends away at the point of a sword. I was thirteen.
The vine master got a purse. I got a spear and about five minutes
of training.” The memory made Jaret forget the advice he had just
given Yatier, except it was the legionnaire that had to pay for
Jaret’s rise in emotions. A harder than planned blow to his helmet
dented the vessel and left the legionnaire reeling.

Jaret gave him a moment to recover. “I
was the only boy from the vineyard that survived the war. My unit
was all peasants, so we got to lead the charge into the
Order-cursed Brak Wall every time.” Yatier eventually brought his
blade back up. Sweat dripped from under his helmet. He puffed for
breath. “Somehow, they kept finding more boys to fill our ranks,
and somehow, I kept coming back alive. It wasn’t because of any
heroism, mind you. I could barely tell you which side of my spear
was the pointy one, but I somehow kept staying alive.” A sharp
exchange of blows cut off the words and sent Jaret dancing back.
His opponent looked like he was about to collapse, but he kept
coming. “Soon enough, I was a sergeant. All the real sergeants had
been killed, you see, and they needed to get new ones from
somewhere. . . .”